Trees with cascading branches have more personality than most. Take our compatibility quiz to find one worthy of your arboreal ardor

MOST OF US SHOP for plants with a Tinder mind-set. Swipe right if you fancy the molting papyrus bark on a river birch; swipe left if the serpentine pods of a honey locust leave you cold.

Picking a weeping tree for the garden, however, requires more of a nuanced eHarmony approach. These plants have unusual habits and oversize personalities: whimsical, morbid, grandiose. Identifying the right one might require sorting through an extensive questionnaire to weed out undesired traits.

No need to thank us, but we’ve devised a simple weeping-tree compatibility quiz.

First, though, you may wonder, what makes a tree weep? In an arboricultural sense, a weeping tree’s dominant growing branch—the central leader—typically arcs downward, becoming a lateral branch and making way for another leader. Droopy collector’s items in Europe’s 19th-century gardens, these are generally temperate-zone plants: lindens, maples, hornbeams, beeches, mulberries, willows. In winter, the meandering bare branches turn the yard into a sculpture garden.

Such centerpieces want undivided attention. “To show off their pendulous habit, they need open space around them,” said
Sandra Youssef Clinton,
president of landscape architecture firm Clinton and Associates, in Hyattsville, Md. Clustering them in a garden creates “a mishmash of styles and forms,” she said. “To me, it’s not restful to look at.”

That said, “These trees work gracefully off hardscape elements,” said
Adam Wheeler
of Broken Arrow Nursery, in Hamden, Conn., who has tried dozens. At home, he is training a weeping Japanese larch to drape the railing of a raised deck. A cascading tree, said Mr. Wheeler, plays off the straight lines of a building—like a rolling wave against a concrete sea wall.

You could think of this quiz as a way to learn more about weeping trees. But wouldn’t you rather think of weeping trees as a way to learn more about yourself?

Which TV residence is your spiritual home?

You don’t need a Hampshire estate to accommodate this 50-foot-tall mountain of droop. A Newport mansion will do. You can find this slow-growing tree in a broader mushroom shape, or a narrower, somewhat shorter fountain form. Both make for a theatrical winter silhouette. But unless you’re planting decades in advance (for distant descendants to enjoy), Ms. Clinton recommends buying big to avoid a Spinal Tap-Stonehenge scale problem.

Instead of making a pilgrimage to see the capital’s iconic cherry blossoms, plant this tree close to the house; in spring you’ll want to see the pink or white blooms from a window. Rigorous pruning can keep the cherry to 12 feet tall. But a bigger tree will deposit a thick umbra of luminous petals on the lawn, said Tim Boland, executive director of the Polly Hill Arboretum, on Martha’s Vineyard.

Which author do you read to the kids at bedtime?

Weeping European or Japanese Larch
Photo:
GAP Photos

DR. SEUSS

Weeping European or Japanese Larch (Larix decidua, or kaempferi, ‘Pendula’)

The taxonomy of the Lorax’s Truffula tree is unclear, but this weeping larch would fit right into Seussville. The growth forms whimsical amoeboid blobs, or you can train the leader to creep on rocks and fences. A conifer but not an evergreen, it drops its needles in winter.

Camperdown Elm
Photo:
Alamy

EDWARD GOREY

Camperdown Elm (Ulmus glabra ‘Camperdownii’)

You can imagine these trees, with their tortuous branching, adorning one of Gorey’s gloomy Gothic mansions. In fact, this elm first made its mark as a cemetery tree. Anchor a house corner with it, advised Mr. Boland of Polly Hill Arboretum. And the lowest foliage forms a secret playroom for morbid children.

What kind of punctuation do you use in text messages?

Weeping Serbian Spruce
Photo:
Alamy

EXCLAMATION POINT

Weeping Serbian Spruce (Picea omorika ‘Pendula Bruns’)

In any landscape, this columnar form makes a statement, which might just be: “Don’t plant another boring arborvitae!” A 25-foot-high specimen can measure just 4 feet across. Viewed up close, the needles are money: The topside recalls the green of a dollar bill; the bottoms look silvery, like a dime.

Weeping Japanese Maple
Photo:
Dom Schmidt Nursery

PERIOD

Weeping Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Tamukeyama’)

A plush globe of almost monarchical purple, this arresting tree is a full stop. The dissectum cultivars, with their filigreed leaves, look like a red onion crossed with a shaggy sheepdog—a pet plant small and huggable enough to live for a few years in a terrace container before you transplant it into the yard.

When you look at a painting of a Capuchin friar, do you think, ‘Cool hair’?

Weeping Mulberry
Photo:
Brian Chojnacki/Sooner Plant Farm

YES

Weeping Mulberry (Morus alba ‘Chaparral’)

Ever wish you could bowl-cut a tree with pruning shears? Meet the weeping mulberry. Old-school gardeners keep the profusion of branches trimmed like a monk’s coif. Let its glossy-leafed tresses flow to the ground, and you get a botanical tiki hut 6 feet high and 10 feet across. And this sterile cultivar yields no famously messy fruit.

Weeping Norway Spruce
Photo:
Alamy

NEVER

Weeping Norway Spruce (Picea abies ‘Frohburg’)

Think of this spruce as a Propecia model in tree form, an evergreen of flowing locks. Stake the young tree and it can reach at least Wookiee height, 7 or 8 feet, with an umbrella of branches that spill downward, as shown here. Unsupported, Frohburg sprawls into a mounding ground cover.